


for blue skies

by staticbees



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Bioshock Infinite: Burial at Sea, Elizabeth deserved better, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, title is from the song of the same name by strays don't sleep
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 15:26:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14772246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/staticbees/pseuds/staticbees
Summary: In one universe, Elizabeth Comstock lives.





	for blue skies

_ She knows he’s going to kill her. But she also knows there’s a million worlds where he won’t. _

 

+

 

Elizabeth wakes up with a sharp pain in her arm, and she muffles a cry, knowing anyone could hear her. She opens her eyes to find she’s alone; Sally is gone, and so are Atlas and his men. She stays still for a moment, gathering her wits. Her head feels fuzzy, and she’s bleary-eyed, movements slow and clumsy. As she rubs her eyes, she feels makeup smudge under her fingers. He must’ve not hit her as hard as he intended, and left her for dead. Otherwise, she knows he would’ve come back and finished the job. 

 

She’s alive, but her left arm is injured, and she flinches at the sight of the gash, even though she knows she should be used to this by now. It’s bleeding profusely, her sleeve stained red, and she tears off the hem of her dress with her good arm, wrapping the strip of fabric around the wound. She winces as she pulls it tight enough to stem the flow of blood, loosening it slightly so it won’t cut off circulation to her arm. Her head pounds, and her neck is stiff and aching, probably from the position she was lying in when she was knocked unconscious. 

 

Her hand rests on the cold floor, light from the ocean casting uneasy shadows from the looming buildings behind her, outside of the window. She stares out the window, watching fish swim by. The lights in the city flicker slightly, and she blinks, startled. There is noise outside, pounding and drills and screaming, but it’s muffled by the water, and she covers her ears, turning away. 

 

She can feel blood dripping down from the cut in her forehead, where her hairline begins. It’s an unsettling feeling. She wipes it away, hand coming back stained red. 

 

There is a poster lying on the ground near her, covered in dust, and she picks it up curiously. A golden angel is plastered on the front, shining rays of sunlight radiating out from the center, and Elizabeth drops it in horror, a surge of adrenaline rushing through her. Her heart thumps in her chest, and she scrambles backwards, her breath catching in her throat.  _ Columbia.  _

 

Elizabeth lifts it up again tentatively, brushing dust off the smooth laminated surface. As she watches, the poster shifts to show a typical Rapture propaganda poster, a drawing of the ocean city in its prime, lights sparkling. She breathes a sigh of relief, letting it fall to the ground. 

 

Just her mind playing tricks on her, that’s all.  _ That’s all. _

 

She knows if she can find a bathysphere, she’ll be able to get out of Rapture, but she doesn’t know if she’ll be able to make it that far without getting caught, given the circumstances. Splicers are roaming the streets, intent on gathering more ADAM, and Fontaine might have contacts in the city, serving as his eyes and ears, ready to report back at a moment’s notice. 

 

Unless… EVE has been scarce, but she rarely used Plasmids when she didn’t need to, and she might just have enough left to use Peeping Tom. The name is ugly, but it does its job well, and she knows it might be her only way out of here. 

 

She casts the Plasmid, watching as her hand fades in front of her face.  _ Good. It still works.  _ She just hopes she has enough EVE left to last the journey. 

 

She gathers her strength and attempts to stand, legs shaking unsteadily. Dizziness takes over, and she leans against the wall, waiting for the room to stop spinning. After a moment to catch her breath, she lets go, off-balance and lightheaded. She stumbles a bit, but soon gets her bearings, and starts to make her way towards the bathysphere bay. 

 

She has a few close encounters at first, accidentally knocking over a display case, or losing concentration, causing the Plasmid to temporarily wear off, but she quickly gets the hang of it. Besides, she’s much better at going unseen than she is at  _ making _ a scene, unlike Booker. His strategy was always to charge in headfirst, guns blazing, no matter the consequences. Sure, it worked more often than not, but in this sort of situation, she needs to make sure no one spots her. She’s losing strength rapidly, but if she can conserve enough energy to reach a bathysphere, she’ll be able to take it to the surface without much effort. 

 

Once she gets to the station, though, she encounters a problem. 

 

The bathyspheres are locked, probably with some sort of genetic code, and aren’t letting her in. She bites her lip, stares hard at the locks. If she can somehow hack into the ‘sphere, she’ll be able to use it, but she doesn’t think Andrew Ryan would allow such a large design flaw in his locks, despite the broken vending machines she had encountered on her way here. He clearly didn’t want anyone getting in  _ or  _ out of Rapture, and Elizabeth is beginning to think he’s accomplished his goal. 

 

_ There’s one to your right you can use. _

 

Elizabeth makes a noise of surprise before she can stop herself.

 

“Booker?” she whispers in disbelief. “I thought you left me.”

 

_ Well, I’m back. Don’t count on it, though. _

 

She nods. 

 

As she stares at the locked bathyspheres, Booker’s advice finally registers in her mind, and she whips around. 

 

Her eyes widen as she spots a private bathysphere, secured off to the side. Its owner is most likely long dead, and although it has an elaborate lock, she has a feeling it will be easier to crack than the ones on the commercial ‘spheres. She heads over to it, glad that the station is empty of splicers for once.  

 

The lock is fairly complex, and it takes her a while to figure out its mechanics, especially with her bad arm, standing still so the use of the Plasmid doesn’t deplete her EVE. A few splicers wander into the station, but leave after not seeing anyone around. 

 

Eventually, she cracks it, and, with a quiet cry of jubilation, heads inside, closing the heavy metal door behind her. She releases the Peeping Tom Plasmid, sighing in relief. Using it took up a lot of energy, and her EVE was almost depleted. 

 

She pulls the handle and feels the bathysphere amble upward towards the surface. It’s fairly slow, for a ‘sphere, but it still moves quicker than Elizabeth is used to, and she grabs the wooden beams around her, not so much for safety as for reassurance.

 

“We did it,” she whispers, glancing out at the city passing by, image distorted by the water surrounding her. The flickering lights shimmer in the moonlight, and she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding, breathing a sigh of relief.

 

_ Always the optimist. Not to dampen your mood, but we only got out of there alive by sheer luck.  _

 

She sighs. “I know. I just… wanted to celebrate this one victory.”

 

Booker falls silent, and so does she, staring out of the small bubble window and watching the towering peaks of Rapture disappear from sight.

 

+

 

Elizabeth jolts awake, soft morning light beaming in through the bubbled window of the bathysphere. She must’ve fallen asleep on the trip upward; she hadn’t gotten any sleep for the past 24 hours, so she had been utterly exhausted by the time she reached the bathysphere bay.

 

She opens the hatch above her head and begins to climbs out, thankful to be on the surface once more. She knows she isn’t safe until she makes it to dry land, but Rapture is in lockdown, so it seems fairly implausible that anyone could have followed her in time. 

 

She sticks her head out of the hatch, squinting her eyes at the unexpected sunlight. Her bathysphere is bobbing near the entrance to Rapture, the waves calm in the morning light. There's no sign of land in sight. 

 

Elizabeth unwraps her makeshift bandages, grimacing at the gash in her left arm. She leans forward and submerges it in the ocean, trying to ignore the sharp pain shooting through her. She needs to clean it, and even though salt stings, it’s better than just ignoring the wound altogether, and letting it get infected. 

 

She takes it out after a few minutes and rewraps the fabric around her arm, noticing that the swelling has gone down slightly.

 

_ Elizabeth. You’re bleeding. _

 

“Yeah. I noti– oh.” She realizes, startled, that there’s a coppery taste in her mouth, and a thin trail of blood trickling down her chin, like a vampire after feeding. She wipes it away, fingertips stained crimson. That’s  _ definitely _ not a good sign. 

 

_ You need to get to a hospital,  _ Booker says, worry evident in his voice.

 

“I know,” she grits out, her nails digging into the palm of her hand. “If I can set another course for the ‘sphere, I can make it go towards land.”

 

_ How’re you gonna know where land is? _

 

She shrugs. “The ocean can’t go on forever, right?”

 

Booker falls silent, and she heads back down into the bathysphere, her mind set.

 

+

 

When she finally does reach land, she’s exhausted, throat and eyes stinging from dehydration. She ropes the bathysphere down and climbs up onto the bobbing pier. Her dress is torn, hands raw and scraped, but she’s alive, and the exhilaration of reaching the surface propels her forward. 

 

The sun is bright and warm on her face, and the ocean glimmers in the sun, stretching miles out towards the horizon. When she opened a tear to Rapture, it was directly into the heart of the city, nowhere near the surface. 

 

A seagull caws above her, and she flinches at the sound. They’re loud and jarring, and even after more than a week at sea, she still doesn’t expect them. There were no gulls in Columbia, only songbirds kept in cages. 

 

“We made it,” she whispers softly. 

 

She suddenly feels lightheaded, adrenaline fading as the consequences of spending more than a week at sea come rushing at her all at once. 

 

She falls to her knees, palms pressed against the splintered wooden boards, and nearly collapses on the dock, vision blurry, head swimming. 

 

She waits a moment for the dizziness to subside, grimaces, and tries to stand. It doesn’t work. She falls back down, and lays there for a moment, staring up at the sky, her head feeling like it’s filled with cotton. 

 

It occurs to her that Booker hasn’t said a word since she’s reached land.

 

She can hear footsteps, and distant, muted voices. Someone calls her name, but darkness is quickly overtaking her vision. 

 

As the footsteps approach, heels clicking on weathered wooden boards, the world slips away, and she blacks out.

 

+

 

She wakes up to the smell of rubbing alcohol. She’s lying in a hospital bed, head pounding. As her eyes adjust to the harsh fluorescent lights of the hospital, she sees the door swing open. 

 

She tries to sit up, but falls back down, the world spinning around her. 

 

The painkillers they gave her are making her feel slow and sluggish, and she wishes the ringing in her ears would stop before it makes her headache worse than it already is. The sound of clicking footsteps sends a stab of pain through her skull, and she groans softly. 

 

“Wh… Booker?” she mumbles under her breath, trying to push past the fog clouding her mind. He was here, she  _ knows  _ he was. 

 

“Not quite,” a familiar voice remarks. 

 

Elizabeth stiffens. “I thought you had left me to fend for myself back in Rapture,” she says flatly.

 

Robert raises an eyebrow. “Well, we couldn’t exactly let you die,” he says.

 

Rosalind nods. “Not after all that work.” 


End file.
